Suguru Shibasaki*1(Corresponding author)
E-mail: shibasakisuguru@gmail.com
Katsutoshi Yada*1*2*3
Professor of Management Information Systems
E-mail: yada@kansai-u.ac.jp
Keiji Takai*1*2
Associate Professor
E-mail: takai@kansai-u.ac.jp*1 Graduate School of Business and Commerce, Kansai University.
3-3-35, Yamate, Suita,
Osaka, Japan 564-8680.
Phone: +81-6-6368-1121*2 Data Science Laboratory, The Research Institute for Socionetwork Strategies, Kansai
University.
3-3-35, Yamate-cho, Suita,
Osaka, Japan 564-8680.
Phone: +81-6-6368-1228*3 CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency.
3-3-35, Yamate-cho, Suita,
Osaka, Japan 564-8680.

Self-control and Consumer Behavior
Abstract
This research aims to use shopping path data and sales history data, to verify how self-control
failure affects customer purchasing behavior. It is known that people control their impulses
and desires. However, when their limited inner resources (regulatory resources) deplete, they
fail at self-control. This research focuses on time spent in store causing depletion ofregulatory resources, and clarified effects on customer purchasing behavior. According to theresults, we found that within a certain time, as time passes, the customer’s impulsive
purchasing tendency becomes stronger. However, we found that after a certain time passes, inreverse, the tendency to purchase weakens. These findings confirmed that failure ofself-control in the store arises to a limited extent with the passage of time.

Keywords
Self-control, regulatory resource, impulsive purchasing, shopping path

1.

Introduction and Objectives

For in-store marketing, in addition to purchasing results, it is important to understand theprocess that leads to purchases. For example, assume that two customers purchase the same
quantity of the exact same product. One person makes that purchase in 3 minutes, but theother person takes 30 minutes to reach the same purchase result. This shows that these 2
people have the same purchase result, but different physical or psychological processes untilpurchase. Considering such a situation, in addition to the purchase result, it seems important
to know the physical and psychological process until purchase.
Previously, the process until purchase was often treated as a black box. However, thedevelopment of sensor technology such as RFID (Radio Frequency IDentfication) has made it
possible to observe the physical process in a store by which customers reach a purchase. Data
from RFIDs includes what sales locations the customer went to, in what order, and how muchtime the customer stayed there. Hui, Bradlow and Fader (2009) etc. use such shopping path toresearch behavior in store.
Another important point in reaching a purchase is the customer’s psychological aspect. It
is known that the customer does various information processing until she decides to purchase.
In the store, the customer makes purchase decisions while being swayed by many temptations.
The customer can reject desires that arise, but she can also do impulsive purchasing according
to desires. Psychology uses the concept of self-control to explain such phenomena. People use
inner resources called regulatory resources to exercise self-control, and regulate theirimpulses and desires (Baumeister 2002; Vohs and Schmeichel 2003). It has been found thatthese regulatory resources are limited, and when a person continues to use and deplete them,she cannot regulate impulses, and fails at self-control (Baumeister, Vohs and Tice 2007;
Muraven and Baumeister 2000; Vohs and Schmeichel 2003). Vohs and Faber (2007) did
research that verified the effects of a customers’ self-control failure on purchasing behavior. In
that research, laboratory experiments showed that subjects who depleted their regulatoryresources tended to increase the monetary amount and quantity purchased in a virtual store.
However, previous research on self-control is limited to laboratory experiments, so the effects
on purchasing behavior of customers in actual stores in unclear.
This research aims to use shopping path data, and verify that self-control failure affects
purchasing behavior of customers. In the verification, we focus on time spent in store as afactor that reduces inner resources of customers, and we treated purchases of unhealthy foodas failures in customer self-control that result in impulsive purchasing. By verifying thepurchasing probability for each passage of time in store, this research can clarify self-control
failure’s effects on purchasing behavior of customers.

2. Literature Review
In psychology, irrational behavior of people is explained by the concept of self-control.
Self-control is the adjustment of one’s own behavior and thinking, towards reaching
long-term best interests and rules (Muraven and Baumeister 2000). People use self-control toregulate their arising impulses and desires, and thus manage their social lives. The existing
research about self-control focuses on the regulation of their impulses and desires, while
Fujita (2011) proposed a comprehensive definition of self-control.
Behavior such as not smoking, calorie limits during diets, and avoiding unhealthy
products are examples of behavior based on self-control (Baumeister, Vohs and Tice 2007).
However, like the purchases of unhealthy food handled in this paper, people sometimes fail at
self-control and end up behaving inappropriately. So, how do people fail at self-control?
To exercise self-control to regulate impulses and desires, people need inner resources
called regulatory resources (Baumeister 2002; Vohs and Schmeichel 2003). These regulatory
resources are limited, and deplete with continued use, which invites failure in self-control that
can’t regulate desires (Baumeister, Vohs and Tice 2007; Muraven and Baumeister 2000; Vohs
and Schmeichel 2003). According to research results based on laboratory experiments, theyfound that in situations where regulatory resources depleted, when an issue is presented that
require self-control, performance to achieve that issue tended to worsen (Baumeister et al.
1998; Inlicht and Schmeichel 2012). Among research on self-control failures caused bydepletion of regulatory resources, many researchers have focused on research that explains
irrational behavior of consumers.
In marketing, self-control failure is often used in a context that explains impulse
purchasing. In laboratory experiments, Vohs and Faber (2007) found that subjects with
depleted regulatory resources tend to increase the monetary amount and quantity of purchases
in a virtual store. It is pointed out that even for simple decisions and thinking about something,people use regulatory resources (Twenge et al. 2001; Vohs et al. 2008) and reduce theirregulatory resources in a long trip in a store, etc. (Baumeister 2002). This existing researchsuggests that people are always reducing their regulatory resources in daily life, and thepassage of time in one day or passage of shopping time in store affects their purchasing
behavior.
Much of past research used laboratory experiments, but there is little research that used

data collected in daily life. Hoffman et al. (2012) is one research that used data collected insuch real living conditions. Hoffman et al. (2012) verified the effects of personality andsituational factors on desire strength, conflict, resistance/self-control, and behavior enactmentthat people experience in daily life. They found that people’s personality and situational
factors strongly affect a series of processes of self-control. However, that considered daily life
in general; it only touched on consumer behavior in shopping situations. Our research treatspurchases of unhealthy food as irrational behavior, and uses consumer behavior data in an
actual store to verify self-control failures.

3. Concept Frameworks and Method
This research aims to verify that self-control failures in an actual store affect purchasing
behavior of consumers. The existing research (Muraven and Baumeister 2000; Vohs andSchmeichel 2003) found that when regulatory resources deplete, people fail at self-control.
However, in previous research, all the verifications of self-control failures were only
laboratory experiments. This is because it was difficult to quantify and scientifically verify
customer behavior in actual stores. But currently, use of RFIDs makes it possible to trackcustomer behavior in the store, and accumulate this as data. Such data on customer behavior
in store is called shopping path data. Shopping path means the behavior process in store, fromwhen she enters the store until she pays for things purchased at the register. Shopping pathcan be put into a formula as P = {S, i, Xi(t)} (Hui et al. 2009, p322). S is the environment inwhich data was obtained, i is each customer whose movements are identified by RFID, andXi(t) shows the location in store of customer i at time t. Shopping path data is the set of Xi(t)for each customer. In short, shopping path data contains information on the customer’s
movement path, sales locations visited, and stopping time. And by combining shopping pathand sales history data, we can clarify the relationship between movement path and purchasing
behavior in the store. This paper uses sales history data and shopping path data obtained by
RFID, to verify the following hypothesis.
H: The longer the time spent in the store, the stronger the customer’s tendency to purchaseunhealthy food.
Figure 1 shows a theoretical framework to verify the above hypothesis. People use
regulatory resources even to only make a simple decision or think about something (Twenge
et al. 2001; Vohs et al. 2008). Regulatory resources deplete during a long trip in a store(Baumeister 2002). Therefore, this paper treats the time passed from the time of arrival at thestore until the customer moved to the target sales location as a factor that depletes thecustomer’s regulatory resources. Also, customer impulse purchasing that occurs due to failure
in self-control is taken as purchases of unhealthy food (Vohs and Faber 2007). However, it isdifficult to analyze all unhealthy foods of a store. In this paper, we analyze customer behavior
at the confectionary sales location, which has the largest sales among the store’s unhealthy
foods. Based on these assumptions, a theoretical framework to verify the hypothesis can beexplained as follows. Generally, people in a store easily experience conflicts between goals
and desires. This is because people have the goal of a healthy diet (Baumeister 2002) while
they also frequently feel a desire to eat (Hofmann et al 2012). Also, customers repeatedly
evaluate products and make purchase decisions in the store while they go around buying. This
series of decision making by the customer uses her regulatory resources. Therefore, one cansay that the longer the time spent in the store, the more the customer’s regulatory resources
deplete. So in a state with depleted regulatory resources, when an impulse arises for unhealthy
food, the customer fails at self-control and purchases the unhealthy food. In short, if the
hypothesis is valid that the longer the time spent in the store, the stronger is the tendency to
buy unhealthy food, then one can say that the customer’s purchasing behavior is affected by
the depletion of regulatory resources.

FIGURE 1. Process by which customer reaches an unhealthy food purchase
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology was used to obtain the shopping pathdata used in this paper. Specifically, as shown in Figure 2, an IC tag is attached to the
shopping cart, and the cart’s movement path is recorded each second. Strictly speaking, thedata obtained is the cart’s movement path, so it is not the customer’s movement route, but the
cart’s movements and stops are according to the customer’s behavior, so we treat it as the
shopping path. This shopping path data was collected at a supermarket in Osaka area of Japanin the period from November 24 to 30, 2013, along with the floor layout (Figure 3) andpurchase history data. The sample size was 3,768 people, the average customer purchaseamount was 2,598 yen, and the average number of items purchased was 13 items. As a resultof preprocessing, we found that 1,594 customers visited the confectionary sales location, 730
customers purchased confectionary, and customers averaged 5.25 minutes spent until theyreached the confectionary sales location.

FIGURE 2. An RFID tag is attached to each shopping cart.

FIGURE 3. Sales floor layout in a store.

4. Results and Findings
We used logistic regression analysis to verify the hypothesis. For the explanatory
variables, we used the time spent in store from arrival at the store until reaching the unhealthy
food (confectionary) sales location that is the target sales location, and the square of that time.
We use the square of that time spent because if a certain time is exceeded, the percentage of
people who purchase unhealthy food decreases. The dependent variable is whether or notunhealthy food was purchased (0 = no purchase, 1 = purchase).
Table 1 shows the analysis results. The regression coefficient for time spent is 0.085, andit was significant (χ^2 (1)=23.24, p<.001). The regression coefficient for time spent squared is-0.002, and it was significant (χ^2 (1)=11.32, p<.01). Also, Figure 4 shows the unhealthy foodpurchase probability obtained from analysis, for each time spent. From arrival at the store
until 27 minutes later, this purchase probability increases with the time passed, but after that,the purchase probability decreases.
From these results, we can conclude that customers’ self-control failure tendency
strengthens until a certain amount of time is passed, but subsequently this tendency reverses,
as self-control tendency weakens. In short, our hypothesis is supported to a limited extent.
Baumeister (2002) pointed out that the longer the time spent in store, the more the customer
fails self-control, but this clarified that this tendency is limited in an actual store.
Table 1. Time passed effects on purchases of unhealthy food (result of logistic regression
analysis)
Explanatory variable
Time passed
Square of time passed
ConstantN
Log likelihood
𝜒2
PseudoR2** p <.01*** p <.001

Regression
coefficient
0.085-0.002-0.8581594-1082.161
34.15***
0.015

S.E.

𝜒2 1

Exp (B)

0.018
0.000
0.136

23.24***
11.32**
40.02***

1.088
0.988
0.424

Figure 4. Unhealthy food purchase probability at each time spent.

5. Conclusions
This research showed the effects that self-control failures have on purchasing behavior ofcustomers. Within a certain time period, the longer the time spent in store, the stronger is thetendency to purchase unhealthy food. This result empirically found that the customer’s
regulatory resources deplete with the time spent in store, and self-control failure occurs.
Also, Sequential Mitigation Effect (SME) could cause the result that the tendency topurchase unhealthy food is seen to weaken after a certain time period. Sequential mitigation
effect is if a person previously made an impulsive selection and satisfied his desire, which
reduces the possibility of impulsive choice when he selects subsequently (Dholakia et al.
2005). The results obtained in this paper can be explained by using the concept of sequential
mitigation effect. When failure of self-control results in repeated impulsive purchases, desires
reduce, and impulsive purchasing is done less.
The findings obtained in this research contain important suggestions for marketing. In
this research, we obtained the finding that time spent in the store encourages the customer’s
impulsive purchasing, but after a certain amount of time is passed, that tendency weakens.
Therefore, policies to keep the customer in the store are necessary, but this suggests thatpolicies to keep the customer in store a very long time are not necessary. Also, when trying tounderstand customers’ impulsive purchasing, one can say that it is insufficient to only analyze
the goods the customer purchased; it is also important to know how the customer used hertime in the store. As a theoretical contribution, previous research on verification ofself-control used only laboratory experiments; in contrast, this research used shopping pathdata obtained in an actual store to verify the effects of self-control on consumer behavior.
Many issues remain from this research. For customers’ impulsive purchasing, this paper
focused on purchasing behavior at the confectionary sales location, which is unhealthy food.

However, unhealthy food includes many products, and it should be verified whether similartendencies can be seen at other sales locations for unhealthy foods. Also, this paper focusedon time spent in the store as a factor that causes depletion of customers’ regulatory resources,
but other factors should also be verified. For example, there is the time that passed since thecustomer woke up. Baumeister (2002) pointed out that the customer goes through his day
while using his regulatory resources, so by evening, his regulatory resources have depleted,making it easier to fail at self-control. Moreover, Beedie and Lane (2012) proposed a
Resource Allocation model of Self-control. This research analyzes the confectionary sales
location, but we do not study the effects of priorities (healthy food, diet, monetary restrictions,etc.) held by customers that visit the sales location. There is a need to clarify the effects ofthese priorities on depletion of regulatory resources and on impulsive purchasing behavior. By
continuing to verify these things, one can gain detailed knowledge of how self-control failure
affects customer purchasing behavior.

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